Ask A Genius 761: Mom’s Death
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/06/06
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, your mom died and there’s been some rude things that have come across and some stress.
Rick Rosner: Well, it was sad because we’ve redirected her mail to us, so we got her first batch of mail including two letters from a bank; she’s gone from being Ruth Kahn to being Ruth Kahn deceased which is really sad making and kind of rude to the recipients whoever that recipient is because it’s obviously not her.
Jacobsen: So this made me think about… you mentioned evolution doesn’t really give a crap about us.
Rosner: No, it doesn’t evolution gives us a bunch of drives and desires that can’t be fulfilled.
Jacobsen: So, in that sense I’m thinking of states of mind that are either depression or depression like, including grieving. And when I think of it, there is evidence that a depressed brain isn’t pruning the way an adolescent brain does, it’s more just connectivity is pulling back, there’s reduction in connectivity in depressed brains.
Rosner: What you’re suggesting is that the bunch of dendrites pulls back.
Jacobsen: Excellent. Dendrites receive accents. Although I actually take that back; it’s probably both. These are living cells, right?
Rosner: So, that makes sense for a couple reasons. One is that a big part of your world is missing. You know that the Jews are supposed to tear their clothes.
Jacobsen: I didn’t know this.
Rosner: I’m wearing a little black button on my shirt that has a ribbon that trails from it that’s been torn in half and it’s symbolic of torn clothes. You’ve lost all these connections with somebody who was part of your connection to the world and eventually you’re going to have to rebuild; that’s thing one. You might as well prune back and then build different I guess eventually.
Thing two; maybe you want to be kind of pulled back so maybe that helps you stay put and stay quiet, so you don’t do anything stupid while you’re grieving. Also, the Jews are supposed to sit Shiva for 10 days. Reformed Jews don’t do it, we didn’t do it but maybe that sitting still is again just to help reorient your stance towards the world and to keep you from going out and drunk driving or some other shit. People talk about feeling reset after they cry, so I wonder if there’s a similar thing where you say when you’re grieving your brain pulls back on connections. I’m wondering if there’s later there’s a gradual uptick as your brain makes new looks for new patterns in the absence of somebody who’s gone.
Jacobsen: I mean statistically speaking people would die at sort of regular patterns. It wouldn’t be seasonal, I’m not saying that. I am saying our brain physiology would probably be used to that just out of a selection pressure statistically over like tens of thousands of years, just in one species let alone millions of years over several iterations of this.
Rosner: We kind of know that different models of connectivity offer different evolutionary advantages.
Jacobsen: I mean complete connectivity gives no functionality and therefore isn’t of use.
Rosner: Right but now it’s a cliché of feminism/feminist science. I was taught this when I took women’s studies classes 38 years ago, that the corpus callosum; the connection between the two brain hemispheres is skinnier in men than in women which leads to men acting more impulsively because they have less information at hand. So that’s one model of behavior, if that research has held up because I learned that in 1984-85, so I don’t know. Usually over that period of time like shit gets revised but if that’s true, that’s one model of connectivity; lower impulse control lower information, just go do shit, you know expendable guys, guys are the possums are of the sexes; expendable. And women with their thick ass corpus callosum maybe proceed more considerately.
So, yeah that it’s possible that the different levels of connectivity depending on your situation in the world may offer survival advantages.
Addendum. I’ve just been reading Cory Doctorow; he is an author I recommend to people. He writes about the near future and the various dystopian threats, often the tech offers along with some solutions that tech offers. And he just wrote about a book, I did a 35 tweet thread about, called Ways of Being by James Bridle. I’m going to try to get the book; it seems like a pretty good treatment of synergistic and cybernetic interactions among people, animals, the environment, and machine learning. Doctorow says there’s no one slick conclusion that the book reaches but it seems to focus on interactions among various systems everywhere. So it may be pertinent to some of the shit we talk about and Doctorow doesn’t steer you wrong.
[Recording End]
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